


Good in the World

by heli0s



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, F/M, Friendship, Hope, PTSD, Recovery, Survivor Guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-31
Updated: 2019-08-31
Packaged: 2020-10-04 03:11:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20464070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heli0s/pseuds/heli0s
Summary: Saved by Steve during his Nomad years, he builds you back up just to crush you. Five years later, he returns.





	Good in the World

Images of him come to you in flashes.

Terrible little souvenirs of shared dinners and evening conversation. The once white and red stripes of his suit, grimy and soot covered. The way he held his arm out and asked, “You okay?” the first day you met after the shooting incident in the park.

Three days later, him at your door, checking in on you.

Steve Rogers, on the run, had grown out his hair and beard, had hardened into a fatalist. But he showed up with a cup of soup and sat with you until you stopped crying.

“Hey. It’s okay. Take your time.” In between blubbering stuck syllables of “Wh-wh-why? Wh-what the f-fuck?” as your brain tried to process the sequence of the trauma. A random act of violence in the park. Two shot dead. Four others bled out on their way to the hospital. You, missed.

_Why them? Why you?_

And he kept showing up. Not too often, but often enough to where you started to expect him.

He turned on the lights for you. Offered to warm up your food when nothing mattered and everything was cold.

Days turned into weeks turned into months and the fugitive Captain America turned into your… something. Perhaps a confidant, maybe your therapist, at the very least, a semi-stable-unstable fixture.

You imagined that outside of his cohort of similarly hidden friends, you were the glimpse back to reality he could have.

The memories of him sting you inside out.

And now that half the world had been reduced to cinders and ruminations and your life turned into one long and desolate dream, sometimes you cling onto his memory because it is all you have. He’s still out there, you know, because the news channels broadcasted every Avenger who was dusted, and they didn’t broadcast him.

He’s out there, but he hasn’t come back.

The fatalist in you has resigned to being just another human, blipped out to him like all the rest.

\--

You teach the art therapy class held every Thursday at the local YMCA. It’s a shit-show, in all honesty, and you’re sure that everyone who’s there can see that you are in no shape to be leading it. Even with your shiny groomed hair and soft pink lipstick, performing the necessary task of femininity, they can see. You have nothing but the meager paycheck and the emptiness of a single studio apartment in a now-dilapidated building.

The current session is dragging when one of your students breaks down half-way through and smashes the canvas. You’re up on your feet, pulling him aside to practice the crisis-prevention strategies you’ve learned throughout the years. He’s sobbing and rocking in your arms, falling apart as he wails.

_It’s not fair, it’s not fair, it’s not fair. Why did I survive? I shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t be here._

You tell him a joke. You hold his hand and run it under cold water. Strategies to replace the overloaded emotions with anything else. You remind him that he’s going on a date next week with someone he’s been very interested in. That the people he loved—_loves_, would want him to be happy.

He tells you the man he’ll be seeing is also in a group. Grief group. They met by chance. Talked about their grief. Cried over salad about their grief.

_Yes. It’s okay. That is okay. Take small steps to move on and soon enough, you’ll have moved so far you won’t be able to see where you started. Go on the date. Let yourself find love and happiness._

The words pour from your mouth like running water, trickling evenly until he is all covered and cool. After a few minutes, the two of you return to the paints, and you pat his back and tell him he’s doing just fine.

The image comes, then, of a heavy brocade comforter wrapped around your shoulders, a cup of tea between your hands burning so hot Steve has to take it from you. You are staring into the dead screen of the T.V. when you say, “I try so hard to have faith in the good in the world. But this... how can it be good? This fucking shitty… fucking life.”

And him, blowing on your tea, holding it to your dried lips, whispering, “Careful, it’s hot.”

-

When you go home later, you drop tears into your own dinner because the stupid plate is blue and green and shines like Steve Rogers’ eyes and why the fuck have you never noticed it. The words you used to console your student are too close to the ones he had used on you, once. You throw it into sink where it splinters into a hundred pieces, and a little part of you hopes he feels it too, wherever he is.

-

On a late Thursday session, he arrives with the fallen autumn leaves as they gust in through the sliding doors. Crunching under his feet alerts you to the entrance where he steps in bashfully, as if he is a late dinner guest.

You furrow your brow because you’re not sure who he is at first, because your full session is nearly finished, and you don’t have room for another student. His once covered jaw is smooth, and the long hair you had grown used to seeing is shorter than ever, swept back, more flaxen.

He’s Captain America now, a paragon of hope in these dark times, so he’s dressing the part.

Everyone has finished cleaning their brushes and have placed their canvas to the side to dry. Your rags are slung over your arms, apron crusted with acrylic.

“Hey.” He says, like he’s been here for the past five years. “I heard about a really great art therapy group led by someone who sounded like you.” Then he smiles, like he’s your friend and not your flashback.

The smile is all it takes. You recede into a moment in the kitchen when you made dinner and the sound of tires running over glass bottles outside popped too loudly and your world suddenly caved in. By the time you returned, Steve was smothering a stovetop fire with wet hand-towels and splashing water onto the burn on your palm.

He wrapped you up afterwards with gauze and you half-heartedly made a joke. “Hey.” You called, “What did King Tut say when he had a nightmare?”

In his enormous and calloused hands was yours, half curled with the irritation of the inbound blister. “What…?” He asked, eyes narrowing because it was not the right time for a joke someone might find on a Laffy Taffy wrapper.

“I want my mummy. Fucking classic.” You replied, holding up your hand, gauze now tucked into the wrist. The fugitive Captain America had closed his eyes as the slightest half-smile lifted his face, and under the yellow glare of the restroom light, you imagined a good world protected by him.

-

He is different now. His grief is different, and his needs are different. His reality is the same as your reality, as everyone else’s reality. He no longer needs glimpses into anything.

So, you think, _why is he here_?

“Hey. You okay?”

_What the fuck? _Your irritation pools inside you like magma, threatening to erupt at any sudden movement as you work to clean up the vacated room. Steve slowly moves forward, having been sitting down for the last fifteen minutes since you’ve ended the session early.

“Get out of my sight.”

He looks like you’ve just slapped him across the face, and a part of you wish you had because _fuck him_. Fuck Steve Rogers and fuck Captain America and fuck this shitty fucking world. He takes a few steps up to you, and in those familiar eyes you see how utterly worn down he looks.

Ironically, Steve Rogers clean-shaven looks older than when you knew him.

-

In the bedroom, on a particularly rainy afternoon, he had helped you put on the newly washed sheets no longer stained with the old blood from your clothes—splashes of other people as the bullets ripped through them. You’d slept in it for almost a month before he discovered it, and then, without another word he tore them off and threw them in the washer. The First Avenger, leaning over your machine, deep in thought had sent you into a fit of laughter.

“You didn’t have to do that.”

“Yes. I did.” He was firm and too serious. You told him as much. It wasn’t a big deal, you said, sometimes you don’t even notice the blood. You didn’t have to tell him why you never washed it for him to figure it out.

“You don’t have to carry this with you.” Steve stepped forward, until your back was pressed against the wall. He put both his hands on your shoulder. “You’re okay. You can let yourself move on. You don’t have to keep punishing yourself.”

He rubbed his knuckles over his beard and pulled you into a hug when you shook silently.

As he predicted, you eventually took steps to move on. It wasn’t easy, and it had taken almost a year. You still cried a lot and had nightmares almost constantly, so you hardly slept. On one occasion you were so deprived you had come in after a day of work and left the door wide open, collapsing on the couch. When you mentioned it to Steve in passing a few weeks later, he made it his personal mission to swing by even more. It made you uneasy, because as someone in hiding, having a schedule of checking on someone would make him _stupid_.

He didn’t listen.

At three in the morning as you laid sideways on the floor watching the second movie of the night, Steve had knocked and demanded that you go to bed.

“Can’t.” You sighed, “It’s been too loud lately. Everything… moving. Big noises. I get--” Your eyes squeezed shut, “scared.”

He called your name, jerking you from the haze that threatened to overtake you again, and pulled you up by the hand. When you swayed, he lifted you up and took you to bed, tucking the covers under your chin. Steve had turned down the temperature, piled on a spare blanket on top, and sat by your bedside until you had fallen asleep.

The next day, he dropped off a white noise machine at the door while you were at work.

-

“Get the _fuck out of here_.” You hiss, “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“I’m sorry. I j-just want--”

“You’re _sorry? _Holy shit, man. Five years, you asshole! It’s been five years!”

Steve takes in a deep breath and sighs, shoving his hands in the pockets of his dress pants until the fabric is stretched tight over his thighs. “I don’t know what to say.” He murmurs. “It’s been… really difficult.”

You nearly shriek as a sob threatens to rip from your throat. “You have got to be fucking with me, Steve.”

They’re the wrong words, though, because the last time you said that to him was the last time you saw him. Hearing them out of your own mouth again opens the floodgates.

-

The white noise machine accompanied by a strict bedtime routine let your progress advance just a tiny bit more, until it crawled along at a snail’s pace, but it crawled, nonetheless. Steve walked you through it in the beginning, turning off all the electronics, setting the temperature to a chilly 67 degrees, piling heavy blankets on your bed, and making the tea.

You told him it was stupid, but he was insistent. The two of you listened to a relaxation video together, practiced deep-breathing, and then he read out loud from a book on your shelf.

Your eyes closed for a few minutes. When they opened again, you were screaming, and Steve’s arms were wrapped around your waist and back.

“It’s okay. You’re safe. You’re okay.”

It had been two hours since he closed the book. He said he didn’t mean to stay for so long, but he was worried. He was reading on the couch when he heard you crying. You sobbed into his chest until he laid you back down.

-

Eventually it became a habit for him to come over in the evenings. Then, it was making dinner together. Then, it was watching a movie sometimes, curled up on the couch. You started sleeping better, having nightmares less, laughing more than he’d ever seen before.

Eventually, all of those things came for him, too. Eventually, he found it easy to be with you. Eventually, he forgot that he was shunned from the world, because you always welcomed him into your home.

-

It rained the night he kissed you. It had been raining all through the movie, and he meant to leave earlier, but you patted the place on the couch—his place, and gave him such a sweet smile he couldn’t bring himself to say no.

So, he sat once more next to you and you told him the premise of the movie you picked out tonight. You were notoriously bad about spoiling the plot, so he had laughed when the information was coming hard and fast and he clamped his hand over your mouth before something important slipped.

You bit him.

And the feeling of your teeth on his skin ignited something that hadn’t sparked in him since the war.

Before either of you knew it, Steve Rogers pulled you on top of him and kissed you so roughly you had to break away for air.

“S-Steve?”

He didn’t stop. He fisted your hair, latched onto your neck, bound your torso to his with two powerful arms and kissed you until you were dizzy. He felt so good. Warm and safe, like the world could disintegrate and you would be just fine as long as you were with him.

The days turned into months turned into almost two years and Steve Rogers was holding you in his arms like you were _something_ to him. Like you could have been a lover.

It was too bizarre. You shook your head in the middle of him lifting up your shirt and held his face in your hands. “Steve,” He blinked the haze from his eyes, “Steve, are you fucking with me? Are you—serious about this?”

“Yeah.” He sighed into your neck, “I am. I’m tired of not feeling. It feels good with you.”

-

You don’t think you can take any more of this. Seven years ago, a random act of violence tore your world apart. It took two years and the help of Steve Rogers to stitch it back together, until he took it into his hands and pulled it to pieces again. The world _did_ disintegrate, and he wasn’t there.

The decimation poked a million holes in it, and you poured out of the spaces until you became nothing more than _this_. A shell. A husk. A monotonous thing, masquerading as a person.

And now he’s back, shoving his fingers in the chasms.

“I can fix this.” He says. “I think I can. I can go back to before. Before Thanos.”

Your perfectly made hair and immaculate make up aren’t enough armor to shield you from his assault. Him, standing before you now, pierces straight through your chest and your gut, and you are falling apart, all five years of _nothing_, sliding from your eyes.

“I’m sorry I disappeared. We—we had to go. He came and we couldn’t stop him. A-and, I think I’ve been too...ashamed to admit that. My failure changed the entire world. I couldn’t..”

You want to scream at him and say, _I’m not the world. What about me? What about how you changed me?_

But inside of your shitty fatalist veneer, you still believe in the good. Despite what Steve Rogers has done to you, he can still be the good you once thought of him. But the years have been unkind, and you hold too big of a wound inside to be healed by an apology. Even if he is good for the world, he isn’t good for you.

\--

In the middle of you sticking a loaded paintbrush onto a canvas, the YMCA erupts into noise as bodies materialize from thin air in poofs of bursting smoke and ash. It’s like the snap in reverse order—and people are crashing into your supplies and students, and there is fumbling and screaming and so many questions.

Your therapy group is scattering like flies, grabbing their coats and rushing out the door, running back to their homes to find their loved ones. When a boy you recognize from before the decimation grabs you by the hand and asks you what’s going on, you gasp audibly because his face is still the same from the last time you saw him. Smooth, prepubescent, on the cusp of growing into a man but still baby-faced and gangly. Your eyes widen when you realize:

Steve did it.

Your feet are soaked by the dirty paint water from your bucket as you look around at young men and women chattering in confusion. Slowly, they move from the room and out the door where others are running and crying, throwing themselves into the arms of their families. Children sprint down the street, going home. _Home_. A word that’s hurt so many for so long.

Absently, you clench onto the boy’s hand until he taps on you to stop. Your heart might burst now, looking at him.

Steve really fucking did it.

\--

Your dilapidated apartment building is exploding with life. The repairs started last week, and you wake every morning amazed at how the world can heal so quickly with a bit of human effort.

There is energy again. There is life again. Even the wind tastes sweet, even if you can’t quite remember what it was like before.

Memorials for Tony Stark pop up on every corner of the city, but even in the sorrow, the world continues to turn, and the pain is coated in gratefulness and optimism for the future. You walk there, too, under the light and against a gentle breeze, purchasing a thriving stem from a nearby shop. The florist beams at you, tells you it’s a beautiful day.

_Yes_, you think. _It is._

It seemed so gray for so long. The sunflower in your hand is a radiant yellow bloom and you can’t help but smile at it on your way back home, a tangible reminder of the reanimated Earth.

Your steps quiet when you arrive.

He is blue and red at your door. Bruised and cut, but he stands facing the frame and knocks before he rubs his hands over his face and sighs, “Fuck.”

“Hey.” You say, quietly, holding the stem tightly in your hand as if it could give you some comfort or assurance. When Steve turns, his eyes are sunken and welling up with tears. A startling slash on his lip nearly touches his chin and over his eyebrow is an ochre patch nearly identical to your flower- dappled with green and black.

His mouth tugs at the corner, as if he could cry. Or smile. Because you are stepping forward, putting the flower in his hand as you reach for your keys to unlock the door to the apartment he knows all too well.

Down the flight of stairs, children’s’ bike bells ring and chime, cars honk noisily, voices argue and yell. The birds are back and singing. Summertime cicadas screech with the joy of being alive. You crack the door open from its frame and turn to look over your shoulder at the wet trails hanging from Steve’s cheeks.

With a small, hopeful smile, at the man who has proven to be the good you need in the world, you ask.

“You okay?”

And he nods. And it’s enough.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a request. Thanks for reading this massive block of angst!


End file.
